Minnie Maddern Fiske Quotes

If someone puts up $100 million on a movie, they're gonna be concerned about whether they'll get it back. So they're not gonna make a movie about three girls, you know?

If studios don't get their money back, we don't have any movies. So it is important that films are successful, and I am fully supportive of that because I'm not just a director, I'm also not stupid. I've been in this business long enough and, to a certain extent, I'm a businessman; I know the importance of that.

There are so many people I know who could be the greatest film-maker but who will never get the chance to make a movie; it's all about what somebody is going to make back. There are not a lot of romantic ideas about making movies anymore.

I've had a pilot every single year that didn't sell for the past four years, that'll smack you in the back of the head. I had a really good one last year; I wouldn't have done the play in New York if I had gotten that one.

I started a theater called Steppenwolf. We've been very supportive of the veterans there.

I'm not denying that it's exciting to have a play on Broadway.

When I was 20 years old and first with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, we had an 88-seat theater in a basement and no money.

I'm proud of doing 'Long Day's Journey into Night,' for which I won an ACE award.

I wasn't sure what it would take to make it in the theater, but despite the struggle, that was all I ever really wanted.

I think if you can write a play, or produce a play, the first step toward success [is] if people don't want to kill themselves in the lobby. Now there must be four or five other steps, but that's the first.

I started directing out of necessity, the first play I wrote in college because I didn't know anyone who could direct it.

No publisher will ever pay you enough to successfully sue them.

I would love to do Broadway. I dont think theres anything more amazing than theater. OK, Supergirl is number one. Maybe I could be Supergirl on Broadway That would be perfect.

There was a moment of extraordinary humbleness and humility and pride, as well, with my father when he turned to me - and I think it was after I played Salieri in "Amadeus" at university. And he said, You're better than I ever was or ever could be, you should do this for profession. You'd have a good time.

My goal for Actress is to have it play more traditional theaters.

There are things that are happening way earlier than that when it comes to someone deciding whether they're going to spend x amount of millions of dollars on a movie. I want $100 million success. The moviegoer is the person I'm more interested in than the Academy.

It's kinda crazy to say, but the way Jay [Duplass] and I stay afloat, because we don't make particularly commercial fare that makes a lot of money, is that we make things cheaply and we make things small. We would kind of be afraid to go make a $100 million movie because you have to do certain things to it to have it make its money back.

If I could act in theater, my whole life, and never act in film or television again, and just direct the rest of my life, I would gladly do that.

People call me a theater actor, but I'm just an actor. But I tell my friends all the time - especially a lot that do theater and haven't done a lot of TV/film - that you have so much more control over your work onstage. When you go onstage, you can really see the difference between people who can really do it, and people who are just kind of pretending to do it. There is no editor, there's nothing that's going to stop the actor from showing what they can do unless it's not a well-written role.

When I was 12, I was in Oliver! at a theater in Glasgow.

If you pay 50 million for something, you probably pay another 50 to 100 million to activate it. And the more you spend, the better you do. There is no point in just buying rights.

I always loved theater and acting in plays and directing, writing little plays and directing friends in plays.

This play John Drinkwater's Abraham Lincoln holds the season's record, thus far, with a run of four evening performances and one matinee. By an odd coincidence, it ran just five performances too many.

Money goes out first to pay expenses and then comes back as profits later - if at all. The high rate of failure of new businesses makes painfully clear that there is nothing inevitable about the money coming back.

Theater makes working in movies or TV seem like a cake-walk.